Selling the threat of bioterrorism

"I was committed to do whatever I could do to help develop an answer to problems posed by bioterrorism," he said.

"And if they had worked for Alibek or not, I would have been just as committed," he added, referring to Forrest and O'Connell.

Alibek's federal research money also has come from the Army Medical Research and Materiel Command, the National Institutes of Health, the Department of Energy and the State Department, according to company and government documents.

The company that Alibek formed and for which Forrest serves as general manager and as a director, AFG Biosolutions Inc., has said that it is developing "a new generation of vaccines" and medicines for anthrax, smallpox, plague and tularemia.

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Claims in question

Some of the projects Alibek has helped lead were promoted heavily but faltered.

One sensational claim came in a Sept. 11, 2003, news release from Virginia's George Mason University, where Alibek two years earlier arrived on the faculty.

Findings from laboratory research led by Alibek and another professor, the news release said, suggested that smallpox vaccination might increase a person's immunity to HIV, the virus that causes AIDS. The release quoted Alibek saying, "Our outcomes are very encouraging."

University President Alan Merten weighed in, saying the research might "produce dramatic, practical benefits for future generations."

Scientists elsewhere were less enthused.

They pointed out that George Mason had announced the results even though the Journal of the American Medical Assn. had declined to publish them. Alibek and his colleagues also submitted a paper summarizing the research to another prominent medical journal, the Lancet.

The paper "was rejected after peer review," said Dr. Sabine Kleinert, senior executive editor of the Lancet, in an e-mailed comment.

More than three years later, no published study has replicated the provocative results touted by Alibek and his colleagues at George Mason. Neither Alibek nor his principal collaborator, who had worked at another university, is still pursuing the project.

"This is a theory that, I must say, does not hold up at all, and it does not make any sense from a biologic point of view," said Dr. Donald A. Henderson, a former White House science advisor whose work with the World Health Organization is credited with eradicating smallpox outbreaks globally. "This idea ... was straight off the wall. I would put no credence in it at all."